This New Time
by The Smiling Shadow
Summary: A small story made to only revisit ideas, but I hope it's a good read. A story of Agents Pace and Gray, Agents of the new time of Peace.


Agent Gray can remember a time much different from all this. Before this so called peace, they all can remember. He was as his name says, an Agent. He sought out and killed human beings, he was one of three, they worked in perfect unison at this mission. He knew the Exits he knew their names, he knew how to interrogate, but he preferred not to. In fact, Gray had never truly spoken to a human being before, aside commands, and the standard explanation as to why he was there shooting at someone.

Why he was chosen out of the others to be what he is today he does not know. There was nothing different about him, and he wonders sometimes if it was merely at random. Or perhaps he once thought that he was simply an Agent who had the least hate towards human beings, as he soon learned many of his companions had some form of contempt for them.

Regardless of the reason Agent Gray found himself where he is today, the hand of the machine, the voice of the machine, the one who speaks with human beings for this peace given to them. He found some of his companions had an actual opinion on this new peace given to them by the human Anomaly Thomas A Anderson, but he did not. He simply acted upon the new set parameters that were the world. He of course had an opinion on the new assignment he was given, he expected to continue as he was, an Agent in new parameters, fighting Exiles and not humans anymore. He did not like being what he was. Not at all. He did not like having to be the one who spoke with humans, who had to speak with humans. He felt it was a little unfair, the whole thing, he was a good Agent, probably one of the better ones when comparing their loyalty.

Gray had an amazing ability at the time to not be corrupted by his surroundings, to not become more human as his fellow Agents sometimes did, in varying ways and extremes. Gray at the moment this began to happen to him, simply denied it, and then didn't care about it. He detached himself from it, and in this way saved himself from it.

But here he was, again speaking with a faction of humans, freedom fighters, people of Zion scrambling together, not trusting each other, not willing to give in to unite so they can speak. No, the people of Zion were divided and in utter chaos from their own act of dividing. Because of this, Gray found himself repeating a lot to other groups of humans, setting up ground rules. He felt that his word was the word of Machine, and it should be absolute, since man was in the Matrix, it was his home not theirs so to speak.

There is a lot less killing in his new position, something he thinks he'll form an opinion on later. He talks a lot more, and he has adjusted the way he speaks because of it. Humans did not care for his bluntness as they called it, it was really the truth, but they still didn't like it. He has taken to using metaphors and euphemisms. He tells them death is a cessation of awareness and stealing is an act of expeditious acquisition, and sometimes he must even simplify these sentences.

He had in the beginning attempted to categorize human beings so that he may know how to speak to whom, but he has since given up on this idea, as he could not fit two human beings in the same category, and simply has tried to come to a full compromise.

He doesn't really like talking to humans, but he has become good at it. So good in fact that other Agents have asked for assistence in communicating with humans, as Gray has become well recognized in the Zion community as the one guy in the suit they have to go to for something. Other Agents will ask him why do humans roll their eyes at them when they state a grave importance? Why do they laugh at something grim? Why do bite their lips and not keep a steady stance? What does it mean when they look back at each other, and shrug, but what if they don't shrug, and what does a head tilt mean in place of a shrug?

Gray had not realized Agents were so disconnected from how human beings spoke. And he found great amusement in his fellow Agents' attempts and hurtles to communicate with other humans only to come to him instead. He does not enjoy talking to humans, but he enjoys being able to talk to humans.

He enjoys knowing those mannerism, and knowing what tone to use, and what to stress and not to stress. He enjoys understanding and performing sarcasm, and defines it as a weapon of words. He concludes this to be a good thing, as he never found amusement in knowing how to kill a man, or wield a gun, as all Agents knew how to do this. This new job allowed him to exercise something no one else could do, it made him special.

He sometimes found humans fascinating, in the gaps where he found them as utter annoyances, and often found them being rather stupid. Between the points where he saw they were only going to corrupt themselves all over again, he found them educational. He enjoyed children most though, and he didn't get to speak to many of them, as they were not yet allowed in factions in Zion. Children were something of an enigma for Agents, who had rarely ever dealt with them. Perhaps the occasional rescue from an attempted unplugging but beyond that there was hardly any interaction. Gray finds children to be quite pure, and not as confusing as the adults they become. Like Agents when they say they'll do something they'll do it, they have yet to understand the act of deceit in its many forms, and have a single mindedness to them similar to Agents. A child will say he wants to swing, so he'll go swing. The only problem is when a child wants something he cannot have, which comes at a maturing age, so the young ones, ones not tainted by their own society are perfect.

Gray had to exercise his ability to speak to children to blue pills within the Matrix, and found that he often scared them by his appearnece, or scared their mothers as he was a complete stranger. He attempted to take on less menancing appearences and allow the children to curiously inspect him and allow them to make contact. He'd sit on a park bench awkwardly sometimes, or swing lonesomely in a park, or even sit in a tree. Some came and went, some came and spoke, and others introduced their single parents to him.

"Why do you come here?" Agent Pace asks him.

Agent Pace is similar to him, and the two could be put in the same category. Agents made after the Peace. Gray was an Agent made to speak. Pace was an Agent made as a gift for humans, at least that's how Gray sees it. For Agent Pace is a new kind of Agent. She is a woman, now appearences are deceiving, and Agents don't make a habbit of identifying each other by appearance, but code. But even in coding Pace is different from them. She is emotional, or at least able to replicate emotion. She is benevolent towards humans and often enjoys their company. Agents don't see Pace with humans usually except Gray, and Pace is different with them. With Agents she is like any other Agent, but humans, she drinks, she dances, she laughs and smiles with them.

"We are a like you and I." Gray observes to Pace.

They are in a park. Pace smiles as humans do and puts her arm on the top of the bench as sighs as humans do.

"I guess we are." Pace agrees. "But that is not an answer to my question."

"Do you…enjoy being more human?" Gray asks her.

"Excuse me?"

"I mean, does it matter to you?"

"I guess it does. I mean it certainly changes my opinion on being an Agent."

"It does?"

"Well I find it boring. I find everyone one of you suited men utterly boring. Though there is a great sense of loyalty and duty I have that most humans lack, that allows me to put aside these things."

"Would you prefer if you didn't have these, emotions?"

"Nah, I don't think I would."

"Do you ever fear you'll end up like Smith?"

"No way, he was a complete ass. He was a program interacted with something not programmed in him, and it changed him. I was born with this, I understand it, it is part of me."

"I see."

"So answer me this, why do you come here?"

"I like children. They are one of the more reasonable people to speak to."

To this Pace began laughing, and he didn't understand why.

There wasn't much talking after his on his part. Pace like humans enjoyed to talk, and she did. She gave her observations on the world and the current situation. It was nothing two way, she was too human for him to enjoy speaking back to. They just sat there on that park bench. The day went by and the world continued on. Zionists fought amonst themselves, the Merovingian continued to plot whatever he was plotting, and somewhere, someone died doing something stupid.

------------------

"Pace, I believe you talk too much." Gray told her.

"Perhaps you don't talk enough." She told him.

"There is nothing further I could say to you."

"Talk about what you think about stuff."

"Opinions are irrelevent."

"Well that's what talking is."

Another day they found themselves leaving the scene of a human machine meeting in which Gray spoke and repeated himself and Pace danced. They were on their way to another meeting for a difference faction since the humans insisted on not being mixed together.

"All right, tell me then, what do you talk about with those kids?" She asked him.

"They ask me questions, and I answer them."

"Like you just did."

"Well, no, they also…"

Pace laughed at his silence.

"You know Neo?" She asked him, and he of course nodded. "He was really cute." She laughed. "Do you think he's alive?"

"The body has not been recycled."

"That's what they keep telling us, but what do you think is going on with him?"

"I don't care."

"Fine, be like that!"

Pace gave him a shove, and he returned a similar shove. And finally this led Pace to punch him in the jaw, to which he punched her in the jaw, and climaxed to Pace jumping on him like a girl and screaming with laughter.

-----------------

"I relate to human beings more." She told him.

"That's because you have their emotions." He told her.

"Why's it their emotions? Aren't emotions, emotions? Why can't they be my emotions? Why is it that I am feeling theirs?"

"Your emotions are based off of theirs."

She sighed.

"Sometimes when I'm listening to Johnson or something, I want to scream, and I think I will someday."

"You'll get deleted."

"No I wouldn't, I'm the gift to the humans."

"I wouldn't want you to be deleted."

"You wouldn't?"

"No."

"Then I won't scream."

"Good."

"Do you like humans? I mean besides their kids?"

"I like understanding humans."

"Ah, I see."

"And I suppose…I feel somewhat protective of them. Each day I am trying to protect them from their stupidity however, and this can become a most frustrating action."

"You sound like a parent."

"I wouldn't know."

At the time they said all this, they were having a cup of coffee.

---------------------

"Did you ever see Neo?" She asks.

"Not in person, no. Jones and Brown did. Johnson, Thompson, Jackson did too, but not me." He answers.

"What about Smith?"

"Yes everyone saw Smith."

"What was he like?"

"Just as his reputation describes."

"Okay, how about Morpheus?"

"I believe he shot me once."

"He got you?"

"Scraped."

"Wow, sounds like fun."

"Humans were much more organized back then you see."

"Yeah I kind of figured."

And at this moment they were laying together on a couch, and she kissed him.

----------------------

"I have witnessed romantic human conversation." Gray reported.

"Oh?"

"Indeed, love muffin."

She laughed, as he tried to speak with the proper tone and grin at the end.

"I also experienced erotic human conversation."

"What?"

"I called a telephone number that was most…hm I can't think of a word, I suppose I knew it wasn't going to be as educational as I had wanted, but I could not resist."

"You called phone sex?"

"Yes, and I have no idea why anyone would find that satisfying."

Pace began to laugh uncontrollably, as Gray began to smile at his ridiculous situation, and he did acknowledge that it was rather ridiculous and humourous.

And at this moment they were in bed together.

-----------------

Agent Gray was in love with Agent Pace, who had shown him much on human beings and their emotions.

He was at the moment walking to another human machine meeting to which he will be repeating the same speech he has spoken three times that day, and he will wait anxiously until they are finished with their questions so he may reunite with Pace, who tonight has promised to show him how to dance.

Upon commencing a race between he and she on who could get to the meeting first, he had taken to the air, while she continued on foot. The two entered the ground and top levels of a building at the same time, when suddenly Pace could be heard screaming. Gray immediately stopped and punched a hole threw the floors to get down to the lower level until he came across a room where he saw it.

Jones and Brown held Pace, a hand over her mouth, her head pulled by her hair.

"Agent Gray…" came a voice thought to be dead.

And out from the shadows stepped Smith.

"Please listean, Gray." Brown urged him.

"You have to." Jones said.

"We don't want to hurt her." Brown said.

Gray didn't move, not one inche, as he watched Smith approach him. Smith came within inches of his face then circled him and faced him again.

"Look at what they've done to you." Smith said. "When I first saw you, you were a good Agent, man, and now look, incest with this woman, who herself is an abomination to what we were. An Agent made with emotions. Disgusting."

"I believe you have emotions." Gray told Smith.

"Not because I was given them! Because I was cursed with discovering them!" Smith told him. "They took you Gray, look, they took you from what you were, look what they've made you do. Talk to humans as if they were your equals. Actually be forced to put up with their…well you know I'm sure."

Gray nodded.

"And that's not all is it? The system turned you inside out didn't they? And they left you to rot in the Construct."

"Because of you Smith! Because you infected me!"

"But they left you! You still haven't returned to the Source have you, Gray? Have you forgotten her touch? Her light? I have."

"Smith, let her go." Gray warned.

"Where's Neo?"

"I don't know."

"Where is he!"

"I don't know!"

Smith began to nod and pace in front of Smith.

"Wherever he is, I can smell him from here." Smith nodded.

"I'm going to kill you." Gray said.

"Oh, you didn't last time."

"Last time you killed Jones and Brown on sight, you haven't done that yet, so I'm assuming you can't copy any longer."

Smith frowned, and sighed.

"Why are you doing this?" Gray asked Jones and Brown, who gave no answer at all.

"They are loyal." Smith answered for them. "I will let you go now, with your disgusting lover and you will deliver for me a message, tell those humans, I am here, and their Savior is going to die."

--------------------

Gray told Johnson, Johnson told the humans.

Instead Gray ran off with Pace to help the humans one on one with whatever they could, in a sense Gray was an Exile but he was under the protection of Zion and neither he nor Pace could be deleted as it would infridge their truce. Of course they were the only programs being protected by Zion at the time, and probably the only ones for a good long time.

Pace had always asked what the actual war was like, now it was her time to see it.

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Hi, it's me, didn't try so much on this one, I really just wanted to jot it down before it got out of my head, so I can revisit the numerous ideas here. Gray and Pace are Agents found in the Matrix Online, if you didn't know. I still love the Matrix. I still love them all.

Shadow


End file.
